


Ghosts

by goddessofcheese



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:36:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddessofcheese/pseuds/goddessofcheese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two lives built on the art of killing, two lives who succeeded in their goal, two lives that must find their way after the war is won. A Javik/FemShep fic set after ME3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

The sun dawns on a new day in London. A new, sore day.

His wounds are not nearly as severe as hers, but his will heal. Hers are scars, an empty space in the bed where a limb used to be. Her breath comes in short spurts with the support of a machine, rasping and painful, but he focuses on the reality that she breathes at all.

They’re both alive… much to their shared surprise.

 

“So what are you going to do now?” she asks, propped up by pillows and nearly drowned in the surrounding bouquets. It looks more like a shrine than a hospital room.

He takes a moment to consider, then answers honestly. “I do not know.”

“You mentioned something about… living like a king… on Kahje.”

“With the jellyfish, yes. But…” His voice trails off as he leans back in the chair and glances out the window. It’s an impressive view of the human city. The sight from her room has become a familiar one, one observed from days of waiting with the remnants of a commander found under the rubble.

“But it really isn’t for you. Is it?” she offers.

“A life of pleasure, adoration, and endless peace?” It’s all he can do not to snort in disdain. “Not really.”

She smiles. “Yeah, me neither.”

He had hoped as much.

* * *

“In my youth, I was told that the Prothean homeworld was much like this. Of course, that was before we became civilized.”

She grumbles and sits down on a rock, setting her pack down onto the ground to check on the joints on her false right arm. “What, humid as hell and swarming with bugs?” To emphasize her point, she slaps a hand against her neck but fails to kill one of the dozens of pests that had been following them for hours. “Explains a lot about your species.”

Obviously ignoring her jab,  he turns and stands on the edge of the cliff, staring out to the horizon. The suns are setting together, one on top of the other. The effect is like the sky is bleeding, long streaks of reds and yellows fading into darkness with a single moon hovering shyly overhead. Trees span out ahead of them, endless and foreboding. And somewhere out there were ghosts… Ghosts waiting for rest.

She looks forward to the challenge of finding them.

“It will be dark soon,” he comments.

“News update from the Avatar of Obvious Statements. It gets dark when it’s night time.”

Just as she expects, his retort doesn’t miss a beat. “With your species’ limited memory, I thought it best if you be reminded.”

“Uh huh. So let’s review. We’re on an alien planet that neither of us know very well, surrounded by God only knows what kind of beasties, and it’s getting dark. So the way I see it, we have two choices. Camp early, or keep going and see how far we can go.”

“Moving forward would be a risky, possibly foolish plan,” he points out. “The graves will be there all the same.”

She stands back up, leaning forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. In the brief second of contact, emotions and sensation connects between them. Amused tolerance from him, her self-aware cheek from herself, the always odd sensation of feeling both her own lips on his skin and the touch he felt in return. She sees herself through his eyes, and he sees himself through hers.

She knows she’ll never get tired of that.

“I know. That’s why we’re going to keep going, yeah?”

He still doesn’t smile very much. It’s just a Prothean thing. But maybe she’s been rubbing off on him, or at least that’s what she guesses when the edge of his mouth quirks a bit.

“Yes.”

* * *

Grey streaks her dark hair, freckles dashing across copper skin. She knows it does, because he never lets her forget.

For his part, his color has started to fade, the bright cyan and stark reds smoothing out as the years pass on by. She doesn’t let him forget that either.

Life on the Citadel moves faster than ever. Or has his life merely slowed down? He’s unsure. Face after face pass him by, all different, all the same. Some familiar, most not. All of them aliens, at least to his tiring eyes. By now, he has managed to stop searching for one like his among them. 

The home is a mix of Prothean and Earth sensibilities; the office overlooking the Promenade is his territory won after much contest, staked out nearly five years ago, but she invades it much like she does everything else. The scent of her favorite perfume. A holo-photo of old friends, some still alive, some not. A battered rifle, finally retired for good. Similar souvenirs were scattered from room to room, remnants of two lives spread out across the galaxy, collected in moments big and small. 

It is not the home he had ever dreamed of, mostly because he had never dreamed of one at all. Such a long time ago, for him and for the galaxy, home had never been in his thoughts. Home had been the battlefield. Home had been a gun recoiling against his arms. Home had been knowing he was still alive, still killing, still fighting.

But this…

“How’s the writing?”

Shaken out of deep thought, he glances up from the console to see her with a pair of tea mugs in hand. 

“The asari’s writing has improved. I merely had to correct her three times.”

“Instead of four?” She whistles sarcastically. “Man, maybe she finally has this whole thing down after six books.”

“The first five did not count, as she did not write those with me,” he points out, taking one of the mugs and sipping carefully. Earl Grey, vanilla, blackberry, just right. No one else gets it quite right.

“Whose fault is that? You’re the one who put off this book for over half a century.”

“Given her species unfortunate longevity, I do not think she minds the wait.” A pause, and then. “She will want another. I think it will be the only one.”

The smile slips slowly from her face, the cup lowered. “The only one,” she echoes.

“Yes.”

She sits with some effort. Technology can only carry the flesh so far, and the flesh was tired. He didn’t have to ask her to know the ache. He felt the same.

The room is quiet for uncounted minutes as the two enjoy the tea, the sounds of the outside world breaking the silence of their private one. He’s grateful when she finally adds to it, murmuring, “Not here.”

He agrees.

“But finish the book first.”

Augh. 

* * *

Why do goodbyes take longer than hellos? 

She thinks about it as they walk down the path. Maybe it’s because of what you have to say goodbye to. Not just the people, the friends, the family, the comrades, the living and the dead. You don’t just say goodbye to them. You say goodbye to everything that connects you to them. The memories, the emotions, the words. Hello opens up the dam to the river, but dams aren’t easily closed again.

The thing about getting old, though, is that you get used to them. It was different than it was during the good old days. Back then, you held goodbyes close to your chest. Didn’t want to jinx anybody. And if you poured your heart out because you thought you were going to die and then, surprise, you woke up in a bed surrounded by flowers and the four-eyed alien you’d confessed to was the first thing you saw…

But now, goodbyes were practiced, perfected over painful moments that kept on repeating. Sometimes they came by surprise, sometimes they didn’t come soon enough. But they came one way or another.

A fingertip brushes the back of her hand, a spark of concern from him, a touch of lightheadedness from her. “You are distracted.”

“A bit, hun.” She pauses for breath and wipes sweat from her forehead. Good grief. Sixty long, long years ago, she could’ve gone this way with a full suit of armor and at least two weapons on her back. But a hard life had taken it’s toll, and the experimental Cerberus tech deep under her skin was not as reliable over the long term as one might think.  ”Just tired.”

“Stop. Rest.” His voice is as gravelly as it was the day they met, and leaves little room for question. So they take a seat and share a bland nutrient bar under the setting twin suns. They haven’t been here in decades, not since they wore out the last of their wanderlust and gave in to the peace they had fought so hard to win. 

Yet the suns seem as familiar as if she had been here only yesterday.

“It’s going to get dark soon,” she comments.

“You still understand basic time, old woman. Amusing.”

She chuckles and reaches for his hand. He gives it freely, their fingers intertwining with practice ease. A flush of emotion and memory, as familiar by now as her own skin, floats through her mind and settles behind closed eyes. 

Years pass in moments. Friends and family long dead are alive again, still fighting, still laughing, still there. Challenges pass by, first as enemies, then as filling in the void they leave behind, then facing another enemy not so easily taken down as the others. Goodbye after goodbye, until just one is left to say.

“You do not have to be here,” he says quietly, tightening his grip on her hand. “Me, yes. But not you.”

And maybe he’s right. The Cronian Nebula was not where she had expected it to end.

But where else would she be?

She didn’t like her other options. Not quietly in bed, stolen away in the night like a thief. Not lying in a hospital with lights too bright and machines dragging out the inevitable. And the one she thought would always get her, the one she had kept waiting for after every other time she had thought she would die, lying on some alien world with enemies all around, finally just one too many and one shot too close.

She’d once been told, back when the Normandy had Cerberus colors and the Collectors had been a threat, that she would probably outlive them all. She hadn’t said so, but the thought had terrified her. Who would want to outlive all their friends, their family? To slide along with time as the galaxy changed everything while you were helpless but to sit back and watch?

She knows that was what Javik’d had to live with since the moment she had cracked open his life pod on Eden Prime. She’d always known he’d come back here. The first time they’d found this planet, the first time they’d taken this path, a part of her had been afraid she would leave alone.

But he’d surprised her. He couldn’t leave her behind then. Just as she couldn’t leave him behind now.

Still… she could turn back now.

“It’s not really for me,” says Shepard.

Javik smiles, a habit picked up from her. “I know.”

The suns set and the pair descends into the forest, searching for ghosts.


End file.
